Rome, Greece, Turkey

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So now 2 weeks after, I feel I ought to report a bit about my 10 day vacation from my semester long vacation in Italy. It started off in Rome, and at first, just Kalee and Jodie were with me, an we picked up Genny just before we set off for the cruise. Initially we had a bit of a problem that when we arrived, the hostel guy put us in a car and took us to a sketchy part of Rome that was a little over a mile from the train station. I used the excuse that the girls didn’t feel safe there and wouldn’t be able to get back there, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to either…not to mention it was pretty sketchy. I convinced the guy to get us a place closer to the train station for the same price, even though it was loud as hell. That wasn’t anything that a pair of headphones couldn’t fix, though.
The first night we were there, we decided to do what I did the last time I was in Rome; the Rome Barcrawl. It looks like things haven’t changed, because it’s still a blast. The funny thing was where it finished. So every place we went to was just a pub, maybe with a dance floor, but the last place we went was a “club”. It looked like a normal café at first, but when you went to the back, there were stairs that went down to a place that literally looked like hell. There were statues, paintings of devils, and stalactites…if you don’t know what that last word was, it’s the pointy rocks that hang from the ceiling in caves. It literally did look like a cave. The weirdest thing about all of it was, as I was dancin my wheels off, I’d look at these paintings on the wall of these demons doing…things, with women or whatever, and I kinda realized where the whole danger of lust comes from, and why the Church portrays it as a deadly sin. It can be one of the most deadly sins because it damages the souls of both people involved; both take something from each other without giving anything, which defeats the purpose of love. I’d look at these pictures on the walls and then look around the room at some (not all) of the guys and see a very scary but strange resemblance in some of their actions, or just the looks on their faces. Anyways, enough with the rant. The funniest thing of all of this was that the next day was our tour of arguably one of the most holy places on earth, the Vatican, and as I wrote in the Oktoberfest entry, we were to have a private tour of the Papal Palace.
Before I start this next part, I want to apologize in advance for a lack of pictures of the Papal Palace as I didn’t take any of the inside out of respect.
So Reverend “Fortune” Fortunatus gave us plenty of time to get out of bed and head to the Vatican. We met him at the obelisk in the middle of Saint Peter’s square, not after checking out the Coliseum and Palatine Hill. I’m not going to write about that though because there are pictures and really, nothing too remarkable happened in comparison the Vatican. Anyways, Fortune took us around to the main entrance where we passed through the gates to Vatican City while being saluted by Swiss Guards. Automatically, everywhere we went, our smiles kept on getting bigger. We started off with Fortune showing us the outside of the bank, which is where all my donations to the church go, then the pharmacy that they have where there are a whole bunch of medicines from all over the world that are hard to get. As we entered Piazza Belvedere, we saw some important dudes heading out, all of home Fortune knew. Apparently they were like Archbishops or some stuff…I don’t really remember though. Next we went inside the Papal Palace where we were again greeted by Swiss Guards. This time Fortune let us take a picture with one, named Stefano. We then headed to the top floor in an elevator, exiting right in front of the Pope’s apartment. Fortune then showed us some maps of the world made back when America was just being discovered and nobody knew anything about South America, so it was just called the Land of the Unknown. The Eastern Hemisphere was starting to take shape, but they had no idea what the West looked like. America was just a blob, and they thought that Antarctica and South America were connected. Next Fortune showed us some paintings by Raphael himself that I don’t believe are in books. It was depicting the “Good Man”, who was fighting and killing animals, and the “Bad Man”, who was petting the animals. I guess the representation there was that the man who fights his animals and natural tendencies is good, while the man who is apathetic and embraces them is bad. (Anyone read/seen the Golden Compass?) This of course was all in Latin so Fortune had to translate for us. Once we left the hallway outside the Pope’s apartment, we went towards Fortune’s office (which we were forbidden to enter), where the was another map of the world, made in the 1800’s, which was much more accurate for the United States and had most of the world pretty well charted out. It was just crazy being here because these were the halls where popes had made some of the biggest decisions for the Catholic Church in the last 500 years. I can just imagine them saying “Hmmm, we don’t have enough missionaries here (pointing to the map) in ____ , get someone on that”.
Next we headed out onto the roof, where I did take some pictures of St. Peter’s Square and Rome, as well as the St. Peter’s Basilica. I think at that point I was pretty close to tears. Fortune at that point was also kind enough to give us a rosary and medallion both blessed by the Pope! After we headed inside, we took the elevator down two floors where we saw more paintings, some of which were from Donatello, others from Raphael, all depicting stories from the Bible. Next we went to the Dukes’ Hall (where the Pope would receive dukes), then the King’s Hall (pretty sure you can figure that out). On the wall of the King’s hall there were paintings of battles which depicted a time when “fighting battles was the means of defending one’s faith”. Below the painting it was written “Turkey: The eternal enemy of Christendom”. Fortune said this was a big problem in the past when they would have meetings with representatives from all the countries because the Turkish ambassador would always stand below the painting. After a while, they just started putting flowers over the inscription.
Finally, after seeing the halls, on my third visit to Rome, I got the chance to see Saint Peter’s Basilica…alone. We were literally in there with about 4 other people when normally, you’re there for about 10 seconds being herded through with about 1000 other people. This is also where every Pope has been chosen for the last 500 some odd years, so it was pretty breathtaking.
Finally, we went down to the Basilica in the Stairway of Kings, which is apparently where all the kings passed after meeting with the Pope to pray in St. Peter’s Basilica. Next, we a saw a room which Fortune had set up for the bishops the next day which is to the right of the Basilica; I forget it’s name, but it’s forbidden to enter for the public and is always guarded by the Swiss Guard. We next made it into the Basilica.
Just as beautiful as the other times I saw it, St. Pete’s was jam packed with the faithful/touristy folks of the world. Fortune walked around going in and out of doors like any priest would at a normal church. It was really funny to see though because he walked up the altar in the middle like it was no big deal, just like I do at Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst. I guess it really isn’t that big of a deal though, because, after all, it still is a church….just, the first and most important Catholic Church in the world. Anyways, we passed out of the Church beneath one of the tombs of one of the popes and Fortune let us go at a German cemetery. After thanking him for about 5 minutes, we promised to keep in touch (at least from our end), and then parted ways. For the next couple hours, I was still in disbelief about what had happened, and I still kinda am. That night we took it easy and I kept repeating to myself, “I can’t believe that just happened”. The next day, we set sail for Sicily.
So let me say something about cruises if your thinking of going on one any time soon. If you bring booze, as I did, make sure that you’re extra sneaky about bringing it on the ship, because they might confiscate it from you and not give it back to you until the end of the trip (and drinks are about 5 euro a piece). I suggest putting it in your carryon in a water bottle or something. Moving on…
We set sail the first day for Catania, Sicily. I gotta say, that place sucked; it was filthy and all the guys honked at the girls in my group. We didn’t do an excursion, which was our first mistake, but the fact that I didn’t take any pictures of the place should speak enough to it. However, I did get a great haircut while I was there…and we bought more vodka to try to smuggle onto the ship, which we did, successfully. I’m sorry, but paying 5 euro, or 6 dollars per drink, just wasn’t something that I was about to do. But boy was that Vodka terrible…we didn’t even finish it between the 4 of us the entire week.
The next day, we were at sea, so I naturally hit up the casino a little bit. I dropped some cash on roulette, which I ended up winning (35 euro)! By the end of the week, however, I was down 10 euro. The house always wins.
The first stop on the first day was Mikonos, which is where St. John wrote Revelations. It was beautiful, look at the pics. In Patmos, which was that evening, we walked around a bit, and I bought some Christmas presents for the family. I also got myself an authentic miniature bronze Spartan helmet…awesome. We ate some authentic Greek food, but to be honest, I liked the stuff at Parthenon in Chicago more. Maybe it was because most of the restaurants were closed at the point because tourist season was finished (at least that’s what some guy told me). Greece was awesome, but we were in for a pleasant surprise the next day in Ismir.
So at first thought, thanks to American media, I’ve got this crazy idea that I’m not safe in a country where Islam is the major religion. Well needless to say, I don’t feel that way anymore. In Turkey, we got the opportunity to take a trip to Ephesus, which is where St. Paul was imprisoned after speaking to the Ephesians, which resulted in him writing the book in the Bible, “Letters to the Ephesians”. Sweet ruins, HUGE city, and apparently one of the Roman Empire’s biggest bordellos as well! But in all honesty it was very impressive with a lot of the city still very much intact. Apparently, the city, which stretches at least a mile, is only 15% excavated (which took archeologists 150 years to do). So, as you can imagine the place was huge. Look at the pictures, especially notice how both Greek and Latin are written there. Its pretty sweet. After Ephesus, we saw Turkish rugs get made (which are incredible). They take about 4 months a piece to make with about 100 knots in a square inch.
We had the entire afternoon to chill out in Ismir, where we got some authentic Kebaps. Yum. It was funny walking around with the girls because it was a hot day they had shorts and skirts on, and for a woman to show off her legs is unheard of in that country. Its not that the women all cover themselves up as in a country such as Saudi Arabia; they actually just look a lot like Italians. Needless to say, all the guys were staring at them and all of the girls were glaring at them. I was just laughing. At one point I was on the other side of the street from the girls when a guy came out of the store to join some of his friends, and when he saw them he said “WHAT!? WOOOOOWWWWWWW!” Obviously more funny in person, but believe me, it was a good laugh. After this, we stopped and had some authentic Turkish coffee and shared a hookah of mint tobacco, which was just great. Unfortunately, I smoked it a little too long and had a low level cold for the next week. To conclude on Turkey, I was very impressed how it was a perfectly modern and westernized country that looked like it put its people first. In fact, one of the pictures that I have is of the Turkish flag with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on it, who is the man who is hailed as having westernized the country and giving it the thriving way of life it has today. Ismir is beautiful, and I’d definitely suggest visiting there if you get a chance.
The next day we headed off to Santorini, which is located next to an active volcano. It’s pretty amazing because the entire island is a ring that surrounds the volcano. I don’t have that much to talk about that the pictures can’t explain other than that I have a lot of respect for the bus driver who took us there because that man got us up roads that I don’t think I could have made with the protégé. The view was absolutely breathtaking, and as the girls had requested, the roofs were blue.
After setting sail for Civitavecchia again, we had some of the best weather I’ve ever seen, and is definitely the last time that I’ll be seeing 80+ degree weather until June. Apparently I got a little “abbronzato” or tan, like President Elect Obama is, according to the Prime Minister of Italy, Berlusconi (what a moron). The last night, we passed by Stromboli, which is a volcano off the coast of Italy which is still active. We were actually lucky enough to see it erupt a little bit! Look at some pics if you’d like.
So finally, the next morning we got back, but they wouldn’t let us off the ship, so we just kinda left without their permission. And finally, we headed back to Verona for the old rat race that is my life while slaving away studying in Italy… for like 20 minutes a week when I have homework. SHAZAAM!

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